Cheaper Nvidia GeForce 8800GT cards with just 256 Mbytes of onboard memory are being announced, as Nvidia's answer to AMD's upcoming RV670 processor.

Nvidia confirmed the cards late on Tuesday, and XFX announced its entry, although the company gave its price as 149 euros ($217) rather than in dollars. Nvidia GeForce 8800GT cards with 512 Mbytes of onboard memory, the more common version, typically cost about $280, but are also reportedly in short supply.

"GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB boards from major add-in card partners are arriving in the next two weeks and should be priced in the $179-$199 range," according to a question-and-answer document released to the press. Partners will include Asus, BFG, EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, XFX and others, Nvidia said.

The cards will contain 112 stream processors running at 600 MHz, with 256-Mbytes of GDDR3 memory that will run anywhere from 700 to 900 MHz, depending upon the add-in-card vendor, according to Nvidia.

Interestingly, Nvidia also notes that the card anticipates DirectX 10.1, but also notes that the upgrade will not be used by most developers. "We pride ourselves on being the first to adopt any important new technology that can improve our games so you would expect us to get with DX10.1 right away but we've looked at it and there's just nothing in it important enough to make it needed, according to Cevat Yerli, the chief executive of Crytek, whose high-performance game "Crysis" ships this week. "So we have no plans to use it at all, not even in the future."